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Back to batch with Java

Putting a spring in your mainframe's step

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QCon 2008 SpringSource has talked up some early user experiences with its Spring Batch framework ahead of next week's launch.

Dave Syer, one of Spring Batch's lead committers, said around 40 organizations are working with Spring's Java-based framework, which aims to replace aging mainframe batch applications written in Cobol. It works alongside SpringSource's enterprise Java tools such as Spring Integration.

Syer described several projects using milestone releases including a large investment bank using the framework for message-driven transaction processing and two healthcare companies replacing mainframe-based batch process applications. While he acknowledged it was still early days and more work was needed on areas such as parallel processing, he said the early results were promising.

SpringSource initiated the project last year in collaboration with consultancy giant Accenture. Both companies realised there was still a demand for batch processing applications but there was no modern development environment to fill the gap.

"We saw that there was currently no commercial or open source project to provide a robust enterprise-scale framework for batch processing," Syer told QCon.

Although some Accenture customers have been experimenting with the framework for a year or more - and some even have live applications - the first production version is not scheduled for release until March 20.®